Cuomo pushes employers to force their employees return to NYC | Hacker News Reader

Cuomo pushes employers to force their employees return to NYC

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54 pointsbississippi57 comments

How has he not been impeached already?

https://nypost.com/2021/06/15/cuomo-nursing-home-order-cause...

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/04/nyregion/cuomo-nursing-ho...

I thought those links would be about all the sexual assault allegations that somehow disappeared with no consequences. I had forgotten about all about the nursing home thing. How is this guy still in office?!?

He is a high level career politicians and therefore has friends in the right places so the procedural things that need to happen for him to be impeached will simply not happen unless there's a reason.

The party will depose him eventually because they don't want people known to have those skeletons in their closet but it will either happen quietly later (i.e. he won't seek further political office and will get a cushy board job somewhere), or if in the near future the party needs to look like it's tough on incompetence or tough on sexual misconduct he'll be the sacrificial lamb.

Welcome to single party state politics.

Also his last re-election was a joke, "somehow" his only primary challenger was a nobody and literally not a politician, so he won that handily, and then beat his Republican opponent more or less on the grounds of being not-a-Republican. It sucks.

Is it time to move? Stop consenting.

The last thing anywhere else needs are people who have NY politics within their overton window.

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to move, and a lot of places are worse anyway.

That sounds like House of Cards.

Honestly, I was pointing out these "conspiracy theories" back in 2020 and nobody cared then and frankly nobody cares now. Complacency and apathy of The People -- that's how he's not impeached. The same goes for many other representatives.

I would add that it's mostly tribalism and avoiding cognitive dissonance. Democrats were calling for Desantis' head because he was thought to be cooking the numbers. Republicans are calling for Coumo's head because he was cooking the numbers. In general, people ignore things that don't fit, and seek out things that do fit, their existing world view.

> Democrats were calling for Desantis' head because he was thought to be cooking the numbers. Republicans are calling for Coumo's head because he was cooking the numbers.

Except, rational people can see that someone being 'thought to cook the numbers' and someone 'cooking the numbers' are wholly different things and only one 'side' worthy of condemnation in this instance.

There is a theory that the term 'conspiracy theory' and the stigma around it was invented by government agencies to discredit unsavoury leaked information and to discredit whistleblowers. This category allows information to be mixed in with obvious misinformation to taint the reputation of the whole category so that status-oriented people would be primed to distrust the entire category.

A similar approach can be used to discredit anything.

Are you implying that the NY Times is promoting conspiracy theories?

Rather implying that these were called conspiracy theories until no longer convenient to hide them.

> How has he not been impeached already?

Simple answer? He's delivering on policy. Legalised weed. Election reform. Ex-convict rights reforms. New tax package. Much of this was gridlocked. Magically, the grease hit the wheels when impeachment came into focus.

None of this will win him another term. But he's functionally useful and not showing signs of becoming an albatross on the party.

Those things were deadlocked by his office. The legislature had tried legalizing weird years ago, for example. His office is notoriously dysfunctional and only gets around to doing anything when he needs a political win.

> were deadlocked by his office

Yes. But ask yourself why? In each case, powerful constituents sat in opposition. For legalized weed, it was the restaurant and liquor lobbies. Those lobbies focussed on him because they knew he'd listen. If Cuomo took a "they can shove it" attitude from the start, they'd have dispersed and likely been more effective. (There is also an Albany tradition of legislators voting for bills on the Governor's assurance of a veto.)

With respect to dysfunctionality, the on-time budgets and--to the degree one can in a one-party state--fiscal restraint hints at deeper mechanics. In that respect, Cuomo's governship is almost Caesarian. Where Cuomo is, things happen. Where his attention isn't, useless deputies are screwing things up.

Do you have more info on why it was gridlocked? I thought many of these initiatives passed by wide margins, like 2:1 for weed.

If you really want to know look know further than Cuomo's mismanagement of the governor's office (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/andrew-cuomo-miscond...)

There’s was infighting over how to divide up the financial benefits of legalization.

I could see him winning another term. If the only candidate to run against him in the primary is someone with little to no prior political experience, endorsed by AOC—-I can definitely see him being renominated by default.

The Democratic Machine is very much alive in the Empire State

The same reason SF elected Chesa Boudin. NY's best days are behind it.

Chesa got 14% of the vote. And my gut feeling on city sentiment is right, he’s going to get recalled.

is this true? How is one elected with 14% of the vote?

It's not true. He got 50.8% of the vote. Even if you just look at the first round of IRV he got 35% of first-choice votes (https://ballotpedia.org/District_Attorney_election_in_San_Fr...)

Thanks for the source. Even if I were to try the best interpretation of the claim above, which would be that Boudin got 14% of the vote in the first round of a ranked choice scheem, that falls flat. Boudin was the first choice of a plurality of the city. This claim falls extremely flat.

It's just (d)ifferent.

"Remember, we have to get people back and we have to get people back in volume. If you were to see a 15% decline of people coming back to New York City, that would have a devastating impact on the commercial market," Cuomo said.

He means the commercial real estate market.

Remote work is terrifying to NYC commercial landlords. Right now, about 17% of NYC commercial real estate is on the market as vacant. A lot more is probably leased but unused. Are all those skyscrapers really necessary?

If SF had a 15% decline in people coming back to the office, that would probably be a win.

Update: 19% vacant, per NYT. 21% in downtown Manhattan.

"A third of leases at large Manhattan buildings will expire over the next three years, according to CBRE, a commercial real estate services company, and companies have made clear they will need significantly less space."

Yet there's still 14 million square feet of commercial space under construction.

Anyone need a spare skyscraper?

I mean, NYC rents are still through the roof. They could build out housing in these tall empty spaces.

I think that it is actually quite expensive and time consuming to convert office space to residential. The main issue being plumbing. Most offices are setup to have a few restrooms and maybe a sink in each space for the break room.

It's a rather difficult problem when you go from 5 rarely used sinks on each floor to needing to supply water and waste drainage for maybe 50 sinks, 50 showers, 50 bathtubs, 50-100 toilets, 50 washing machines, etc, all on that same floor. Not to mention that you now have to figure out waste disposal because you will be creating way more garbage that is much smellier.

Sucks to suck. If any industry is lacking for capital to face a pivot it certainly isn't real estate. The interest rate is ridiculously low and no one seems to believe it will change.

Oh I bet, but if the office space is becoming long term not useful, and people still pay a lot to live in NYC, it seems like there’s money in conversion.

That said I am the farthest thing from a real estate expert as you’ll get.

housing would follow the work places, and as they go, housing demand is not a given.

I hear you, but it's NYC - rents are still high enough that I'm thinking demand for housing is there even if demand for office space isn't.

That was my thought, but I'm guessing the retrofit would be really expensive.

> NYC commercial landlords

It’s difficult to overstate the political influence these landlords and especially the associated developers wield in NYC and NYS politics.

As another commentator said, the commercial real estate industry is a huge force in NYC and NYS politics. However, it's also a huge revenue generator for both city and state. Putting aside political influence, they're staring down the double barrels of covid money running out, and then greatly reduced revenue from rents. NYS is also weighed down by pension costs, so I can see why Cuomo wants people back ASAP.

A relevant, though long video on the subject from Louis Rossmann:

West Midtown Manhattan's businesses are going, going, gone.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kPhbiuDo6I

I strongly encourage employers mandating a return to office in NYC to publicly announce it. Makes it straightforward to identify where to source new remote talent from.

Have a friend in HR at a fortune 500 company. He said that early on, they were not sure on what the work from home rules would be and they found that applicants were simply ghosting them when they found that it wasn't a set in stone policy yet. They are trying to hire a lot of tech talent and so they had to officially declare that people would have extensive work from home privileges if they were going to get anywhere close to their hiring goals.

No one wants to go back to the dysfunctional way things were.

So, suddenly, lowering carbon emissions isn’t that important anymore

Getting people working in NYC is probably good for reducing carbon emissions. Even working from home few places in the country are people going to be carless and certainly are less likely to live in environmentally friendly housing.

He should have been impeached six months ago.

"come back to support commercial real estate"

You reap what you sow, Cuomo.

Cuomo pushes employers to force their employees to <s>return to</s> flee from NYC-based companies

FTFY

Considering how many remote employees have their pick of companies they can work for remotely, good luck convincing people to return to what are now the highest taxes in the country.

It’s not only shops that make a living on commuters but also, very importantly, tax payers. If you live in NJ or CN and commute to an office in NYC then you pay state income tax to NY - which has a higher marginal rate than it’s neighbors. But if you have an arrangement where you work from home then you no longer have to pay taxes to NY. Also, people that live in NYC because they don’t want to commute have an additional (not insignificant!) NYC resident tax so if you move out that’s again more tax revenue lost.

It will be in the many billions.

NYC has a budget of 100 billion, NY state a budget of 215 billion.

Has to get funded somehow!

Good luck!

The current headline is: "Cuomo begs businesses to return to NYC after devastating shutdown"

The article is full of some funny quips, too:

> "So let me get this straight..when Republicans have been saying this that means they are science deniers trying to kill people, but when @NYGovCuomo finally says this today then he is a genius who should write another book about his incredible leadership?" Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., tweeted. "Did I get that right?"

> "Brilliant strategist... it's incredible that no one thought of this months ago!" Donald Trump Jr. joked in response.

Don Jr.'s quip is only funny if you are laughing -at- him.

There was a pretty good reason not to encourage employees to come in to the office in NYC months ago.

> The article is full of some funny quips, too:

Neither of those quips is funny. They show what should be an embarrassing level of ignorance if not outright stupidity. The state of the world even six months ago was COVID vaccines were only available to the most vulnerable groups. Six months ago clamoring about states opening up and people returning to offices was asinine. Six months ago a small enough portion of the populace was vaccinated that the danger of COVID spreading was the same as the preceding six months.

So he basically just suggested that employers should encourage employee to come back to the office? Given the audience, and what the city stand to lose, his comments seem appropriate to me.

It's not like he's mandating offices force people back in or face penalties

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